John Langan (2)Anmeldelser

Absolutely terrific! One of the better horror novels I've read in quite some time.

This took me a long time to get through, not because of the book but because of a holiday and other things going on although I will admit I’m not a huge fan of first person, which can make some books sound more tell than show. That’s the case here, though I’m unsure if third person would have worked. The story is told in three parts, first and last by Abe, the book’s main character, and the Middle by someone Abe and his fishing buddy meet, when we learn the legend surrounding Dutchman’s Creek. This structure removes one from the story a little in that I found myself far more interested in past characters and events than those of the present ones. I also found the sex scene towards the end gratuitous. Fans of Lovecraft type literary tales should love this book. For others who don’t like the gothic slow burn they may not appreciate it so well. The world the author creates, he brought to life, and the narrative invoked all the right imagery. It’s an excellent book — fantastical, imaginative, dark, visceral in places, subtle in others, mythological, epic — and the right reader will love it. The end was satisfying, though left me questioning the fate of the world, and the possibility of one the horrors presented ever bleeding to a greater degree into our reality.

An interesting, Lovecraft-adjacent story. About half the book—maybe more?—is a flashback story that I felt could have been shortened considerably. I don't know that I was ever scared (which is saying a lot, because I scare easily) but Langan evokes a feeling of dread and pervasive unease as horror seeps into the ordinary world.½

I had some slight concerns about reading this, a bit of a marmite book and had seen some less than flattering reviews about the third part - but whilst I understood whilst reading the bit that got certain reviewers ire, that it was a bit eye rollinginly-cringey - there is a play off from this in the very last page which adds another level of horror.

The plot - although most would say horror - it's not; it's about loss and the pain of it, and to a degree the passing of time wrapped up a supernatural-ish slightly Lovecraftian tale, where fishing plays a redemptive part for the protagonist(s).

Stealing a line from another Amazon reviewer - the 1st part (there are 3 and all very separate to a degree) has one of the most well written and homely voices outside Stephen king - certainly the part that he does exceptionally - this sets the tale and the role of fishing in it. Part two gives a backlog to the story which could have had a fair number of pages lopped off. This is my only criticism; it is a bit over-written in places - I found the same in his short stories. Certainly a literary tale though in the manner of MR James and the old weird tales authors of that ilk.

In the afterwards; the author tells us that publishing houses thought the same - too literary for a horror novel, too much horror for a literary novel. I'm glad though that someone decided to ignore that and publish it.

Def. Recommended though.

Literate horror with a payoff. Really enjoyed.

*The Fisherman* by John Langan is one of the most gripping Lovecraftian novels I have read in a very long time. As a fan of the genre, I've read plenty of interesting takes on cosmic horror, but *The Fisherman* is by far the most effective. Right from the off, you are invested in the characters and the layers of the story, with each section of the tale being as captivating as what preceded it.

This is very much the sort of book that is perfect on a cold, and rainy night. You'll open it and find that several hours have passed by. Peak cosmic horror at its best. Can't wait to read more of John Langan's work.

Seventh Book for the spooky season, and maybe this months winner? Trying to read horror or at least books with horror elements for the whole month of October.

Absolutely stunning!

A slow and intimate unfolding of an Eldritch horror. This is a horror story that looks into all forms a grief, and how it can tear apart not only one persons life, but the very world itself.

The use of story telling here is phenomenal. The first person persepectove, told from an old fisherman “who ain’t the best with words” scared me at first. But despite not doing much reading himself, our Narrator Abe was so captivating.

I know a few reviews said that it gets a bit slow. But I found this constantly packed with unsettling or down right creepy scenes. I finished it in two nightly sittings, because I found this to be such a page turner.

Amazing work!

Not Langan's best, but decent enough. A solid collection that suffers somewhat from having few stand-out stories ("Anchor" probably the sole exception). It does, however, hold interest as a sort of companion piece to his stellar novel The Fisherman, as several of the stories touch on similar themes (and indeed, in several cases cases, on fishing). The look into how Langan reiterates on themes and plot points to build his version of the mandatory author mythos is faschinating, but maybe for the already initiated rather than horror fans looking to discover a new author.

Verdict: Well worth reading, but start elsewhere.½

I'm not sure I would have ever picked up this book if it wasn't for one of my book clubs choosing it. And what a shame that would have been.

If ever a mythical horror slow-burn could be labelled as "cozy", this would be it. Though it begins with fresh real-life horror and grief and slowly turns to the most fantastical horror imaginable, as the reader you feel safe in the author's hands. As if he's not trying to scare you, just trying to share what he knows.

The beastly horrors, while perhaps few and far between, are intense and graphic in a way that sticks with you. But the moments of line casting and reflection always allow you to catch your breath.

Truly a beautiful, horrible experience.

It is kind of fun when you read a book that takes place near the place that your are currently living, especially when not in a city. There are tons of books that take place in NYC, for example, but not many that take place is say Esopus, NY. I will be truthful still in stating that until I moved back to the Hudson Valley, I didn't even know there was an Esopus, NY. Now that I am here and near there, it becomes fun when it pops up in a book.

It is even more fun when other similarities pop up. One of the main characters, for example, has the exact same name as a friend of mine. The book also mentions a Lutheran church in Woodstock. I am Lutheran and I happen to know the pastor of the church in Woodstock. So, there was lots of fun with these small coincidences for me in this book.

The Fisherman by John Langan is about two men, who both lose significant members of their family- Abe, who's wife dies from illness and Dan, who's whole family dies in a tragic car accident. These two men come together on weekends to fish in different areas of the Hudson Valley. One time, after a particularly rough patch, Dan suggest the men fish in Dutchman's Creek which suddenly appears on Abe's map.

As the men go to the Creek, they stop at a local diner and meet a man, who after hearing they are headed to Dutchman's Creek starts telling them the tale of the creek and the horrors of what has happened there. Will the men continue their journey? (Hint: yes) What will they find there? (Hint: not good things)

I read this book on a train ride and I will state that it was perfect for a train ride or a plane ride or some other such ride that a good chunk can be read, can be put down for a bit, only to finish it later. I am not sure I would have finished the book if it wasn't my train book. I write that because the book felt like two short stories on the same topic, shoved together to make one story.

There is the story of the two men, which happens in Part 1. You hear their story, you get to know them, and the book builds their relationship for 46 pages. The story of Abe and Dan is then interrupted for 144 pages with the backstory story of Dutchman's Creek as told by the man in the restaurant. Dan and Abe are gone for the entire story as is the man telling it. It is just the story of the past. In Part 3, we come back to the restaurant and to Abe and Dan's story for the last 66 pages to wrap up the book. Without the train stop and taking a long break in between reads, I am not sure I would have gone back to finish Dan and Abe's story. It was too much back story.

With that written, I gotta state, in spite of what I just wrote, it was still a fun book. I gave it a sort of pass too because it is a local author on an indy publishing house (Word Horde). I also only paid $10 for the book retail on Amazon (it is only $2.99 on Kindle), so there was lots of forgiveness for the semi disjointed story. If it were a major publishing house with a big time author, I might have balked a little more at how it was put together, but local author, small publishing house, and cheap book- it was tons of fun and a good story.

It was very imaginative and drew a good mix of religion and lore. There were bits and pieces of story that didn't make much sense. For example after hearing the long story (which would have gone late into the day at that point), Dan and Abe still act the way they do in Part 3, whereas I would think one would take off running or simply not go, but you kind of let that go. It is good monster horror that I would recommend for fun.

I gave this one 3 stars bordering on 3.5 stars mostly due to how the story felt like two different stories.

Sometimes I am so impressed and excited about a book that I will start my review early and adjust as I read. I am working through this detailed tale of grief and beckoning smokey voices roiling in from under the door. So far I am getting some very Lovecraft tones with hints of Ambroise Bierce. The writing is very implicit and visual as are the character descriptions. The tone and layers are very enjoyable and make for a long night of reading under a single lamp while surrounded by darkness. I am picking up a strong Gustav Meyrink influence from Mr. Langan. Elements of Salem's Lot and Pet Semetary also abound but in a way that still allows the story to stand on its own. More to follow on this eerie tale.
Having finished this book I can honestly say that my impression of it has not changed but is considerably enhanced. The Fisherman is nearly everything, that, I on a personal level want in a book. In the literary market of today it is challenging to find a story so layered and yet so open. Those stories are out there but sadly you will not find them on the apt to be stale, bestseller list. This novel is about anything other than fishing. It is about the soul, loneliness, regret and redemption. But let us not be complete with our mention of redemption. It comes with a price and with that price is a forever lingering and unforgettable memory of the life we have lived.
Langan is a peerless story teller. The story being told about the story presents the reader with a few choices. The left road, the right road or the road you cannot see. Either way Langan is going to make you feel small convoluted and guilty for whatever direction you may take. Peering in on another's sadness and misfortune but yet still grateful that you are able to sit and listen while the tide is out. But beware, when the tide comes back in the author might just push you into the deep, encroaching water.
We are all going to loose those near to us and in turn we will all be lost to those who hold us dear. It is inevitable. How we carry it is our burden.

This is a very creepy story about what happens when you lose someone you love, someone whose existence is central to your own existence. What would you do to get that person back? And what if it wasn't actually them? Would you still take them back? But first, fishing. A widower feels the urge to start fishing one day after the passing of his wife, and it brings him a sense of normalcy, or at least it dulls the thoughts, dulls the pain of loss during the time he spends fishing. But why did he suddenly feel the urge to start fishing? And why does he feel compelled to invite his friend in grief, who also lost his loved ones to a tragic accident, to join him? What are they fishing for? There is a story that is central to the fishing story, and it ties together history, folklore, and cosmic horror, that I found to be more compelling and scarier than the main story. I felt like the stakes were much higher in this legend than in the protagonist's story, which I suppose makes sense, because our protagonist cannot possibly overcome the cosmic powers central to both stories, he can just try to save himself, which he does after a fashion. The folklore tale was absolutely enthralling and interesting. And when the creatures from that world start inhabiting our modern world, it was also deeply unsettling. I liked this book, but I felt like it was anticlimactic at the very end. But I can see how this won a Bram Stoker award.

Pretty creepy; 3.5 stars.
This reminded me very much of Stephen King books; The over the top fantastic creatures and world the author created. From the beginning of the book, I was prejudiced towards the tale, because of the fishing going on throughout the book. Never is the subject brought up that fish can feel pain. Though I fished as a child, and my father took myself and my daughters to an Indian reservation in New Mexico to fish, my father later gave up fishing, as he came to believe that fish have souls. As for myself, I've observed horrible practices in the fishing industry. I'm a vegan, By the way.

The protagonist, and his fishing buddy dan, both worked at IBM. I remember my ex-husband talking about the fact that IBM used to take care of their employees. That if you worked for ibm, you had a job for life. That later changed, as noted in this part of chapter 3:
"before long, his job was in serious jeopardy. He'd been team leader on a pair of important projects, one of which demoted him, while the other dropped him outright. The company had changed. This was not, as management had started trumpeting, your father's ibm, which I guess meant it wasn't my ibm. The notion of a corporate family that took care of its own and in so doing earned their loyalty was on the way out, evicted by simple greed. What this meant practically speaking was that Dan could not be assured of the same understanding and indulgence I had received more than a decade prior." (When the protagonist had lost his wife, and gotten a 3-month grief leave. He managed to pull it together in time to go back to work, but when Dan lost his wife and twin boys, he couldn't pull himself together.)

When a member of the camp (families of men who are working on the damn) wife is run over by a mule cart, he goes to the dark side to try to get his wife back:
"...helen, the Dead woman, The woman who wasn't dead and isn't any longer, is standing there on her ruined legs, looks at regina, then looks at the room she's guarding. She says, 'the children.'
The sound of her voice is something awful. It's hard, raspy, as if it hasn't been used in a while, which I guess it hasn't. It's kind of liquidy, too, as if Helen's speaking from underwater. There's something else, a quality to the woman's voice Regina will have a hard time putting her finger on when she relates Helen's visit to her husband and his friend. She has an accent, Regina will say at last, but who doesn't have an accent in this place? It's not the accent the woman had when she was alive, no, not like what any of them has, moving from one tongue to another. This accent is what you'd imagine if an animal learned how to speak, something that wasn't trying to master your particular language, but the idea of language itself. it's not the way you'd think a dog or cat would speak, either. It's the voice you'd give a lizard, or an eel."

Dan wants to go to Dutchman's creek, because he had read in his grandfather's journal, after he had lost his wife, that his grandfather had seen his wife there. Thus, Dan figures he can find his wife there. He's obsessed with the idea. the two men arrive at a fishing spot, and Dan takes off to the left, up the creek, and the protagonist wanders down in opposite direction. He sees what looks to be his dead wife, and has sex with her:
"head swimming, I eased myself off Marie and onto my back. Once upon a time, I would have cracked a joke -- at the very least, said, 'I love you.' But nothing I could think of seemed appropriate - adequate. Truth to tell, there wasn't a whole lot of organized activity happening between my ears. The conflagration roaring through me had blown out, extinguished by the finish to Marie's and my lovemaking, leaving me empty, scoured and scorched by its ferocity. Aware of her beside me, I gazed up at the trees pointing to the clouds overhead, blinking at the rain that made it through the lattice of branches. Mother of pearl, on the clouds struck me as blindingly beautiful. My mind a pleasant blank, I turned to marie.
What was sharing the forest floor with me had the same gold eyes, but the rest of its face might have leaped out of a nightmare. It's nose was flat, the nostrils a pair of slits over a broad mouth whose lower jaw jutted forward, exposing the row of daggered teeth lining it. It's hair was stringy, a Mane of tendrils. The hand it rested on my chest was webbed, each thick finger capped by a heavy claw. Its mouth open, it gave forth a sigh of postcoital contentment.

I just loved The Fisherman, and had high hopes for this book, which I understand is his first novel. House of Windows is an intriguing story, but, to me, fell somewhat flat in its storytelling. While the length of a normal novel it just seemed to be too long and somewhat overwrought, though given Roger’s (the character who disappears) fascination with Dickens, it may have purposely been written that way. Nonetheless, I was somewhat disappointed.

An absolute marvel of a novel. It's horror, yes, but also so much more. Langan is a master of voice and tone, and his characters are realized with a rare economy of language that still gives them more life than most. This is a book fore everyone, whether you're a horror fan or not.

This book starts out pretty well. The first person narrator has an interesting and engaging story to tell. We get to know the main character Abe, and we get to know his colleague Dan. This goes on until about 20 percent into the book.

Then Howard takes over, and he tells a looooong and rather boring (and too detailed) story about a magician, and monsters, and undeads and whatnot. I totally lose interest. This goes on for almost half the book.

When we then come back to the main character and his fishing buddy Dan, I’m just too bored to get back into the story.

Great story within a story.

After his wife's untimely death, Abe takes up fishing as a sort of therapy. Eventually he's joined by a co-worker, Dan, who also lost his entire family in a terrible car accident.

After a period of time, Dan suggests a new fishing spot. On the way they stop at a local bar and are told the horrifying myths surrounding that particular fishing spot - along with a warning to go literally anywhere else to fish.

Since you know going in this is a horror story, you know darn well that they two men don't heed the warning and bad things happen. Not really a spoiler, but in case any reader would be surprised at this turn...

This was a skillfully told "story within a story", but by the time we get to the crisis you already suspect what will happen, but still a great read!

Absolutely stunning! I loved everything about this from start to finish. At first I was lulled with the beautiful narration and descriptions of gorgeous settings. The subject of grief was a constant throughout the book and it was handled perfectly. The story built at a wonderful pace for me. When crap started to get weird it felt like it was timed just right. Definitely a new favorite for me and I recommend it 1000%!

I thought this a superb horror novel and finished it in two days. It's a great example of what the kids today call "cosmic horror," but it is not so Lovecraftian (H. P. Lovecraft being cosmic horror's exemplar) as to seem like a pastiche, or an homage, or anything like that. Langan also, thank goodness, avoids any tie-in to Judaeo-Christian anything, which means that, outlandish as the mythology behind the book may seem, I can't reject it out of hand because it's something I've rejected already.

There were occasional places where I thought Langan's reach exceeded the power of his prose, but the book is well-written and Langan is a very thoughtful guy (I am listening to a podcast called "Talking Scared" and he is certainly steeped in his chosen genre's history and traditions). I'm looking forward to reading more by him.

If the big beasties and inter-dimensional reverberations of 'cosmic' horror don't automatically make you roll your eyes and say "c'mon ... gimme a good ol' fashioned vampire," give The Fisherman a shot. It's really, really good, and deserves its reputation.½

Boring

Absolutely love this book. Both stories work really well.

Kom meg gjennom halvparten av boken, men den var SÅ kjedelig at jeg ikke orket å fortsette. Den var veldig treig og kom seg ingensteds. Ble bare utrolig lei og det var mange andre bøker jeg heller ville lese i stedet.
Vil kanskje gi den et forsøk til. Har fått veldig god tilbakemelding fra en booktuber jeg liker, og føler at den kommer til å bli interessant

"I guess being a professor helps you fake your way through all kinds of situations. After all, when was the last time you heard one of them say he didn’t know something?"

An awesome October read of cosmic horror.

You get three and a half stories in one with this one. There's the lead up to the main action (this starts slow), the long-ago story (which is probably the best part of the book), the main story and then there's the aftermath/epilogue.

So glad I decided to read this for Halloween. It was perfect.